Reading Li Bai in the Western Regions?
In the autumn of 762 AD, Li Bai, who was sick and torn apart, needed nothing but wine, wine. He'd been drunk too much in his life, but this was the last time. He raised his glass to invite the moon, but found that the moon was in the water. He jumped into the water leisurely, hugged the moon and fell asleep. According to ancient rituals, death by drowning is unlucky, let alone falling into the water while drunk. His relatives and friends kept secret about this. But this is really the most poetic way to die. Who is as serious and innocent as he is? Even death is a poem. Where did his natural poetry and his extraordinary talent sprout? Why is he so different from us? ?
Li Bai’s life was transplanted from the Western Regions to the Tang Dynasty. Dating back about a hundred years from Li Bai's childhood, Li Bai's family suffered major changes in the late Sui Dynasty. The whole family was exiled from Longxi to the distant Suiye in Central Asia. When Li Bai was 150 years old, the Li Bai family, which had spent a long time in Central Asia, moved inland again. This wandering family has survived for hundreds of years in the vast and sparsely populated Western Region, among the people who are mainly nomads. It is impossible to completely reject the blood of foreigners--Li Bai is at least half a Hu'er, right? This is just my guess. ?
This wandering family finally gave birth to a great wanderer. Here history meets a great genius. ?
The Tang Dynasty was the most glorious era in Chinese history, and its cheerful and graceful momentum was unprecedented in the entire feudal society. Only the country of the Tang Dynasty can keep pace with the bold steps of the genius Li Bai. A great opportunity for history is created here. Without that open era, this heterogeneous genius would have been stifled; without the addition of this genius, this open era would have lost a lot of its brilliance. ?
Exotic and wandering feelings are actually full of all Li Bai's poems. Li Bai has no hometown, or in other words, his hometown is everywhere. He went from Suiye to Shu, from Shu to Beijing to Shandong, and from Shandong to other parts of the Tang Dynasty. His boiling blood made it impossible for him to settle down anywhere. He would always walk on the long wandering road, drinking his wine and spilling his tears and sing his songs. The poet rejects the existence of roots. This is a complete sense of wandering: seeing life as a pure wandering and practicing this, there is no other person in the history of Chinese culture. ?
Li Bai is really the knight-errant of Chinese poets. His romance, madness, love and hatred, loneliness and pain, dreams and waking, his heroism and loyalty, and his wandering, all reach extremes. In his eyes, knight-errants are much more glorious than Confucian scholars who are knowledgeable and poor in scriptures. Even after entering the court, his domineering and even rogue temperament would not change. The powerful man takes off his boots, the noble concubine holds the inkstone, and the master holds the spoon. He requires the powerful to respect him, and the emperor should treat him as a friend. He wasn't used to looking up. ?
Traveling among the cities in the Western Regions such as Kashgar, Ruoqiang, Altay, and Ili, the human geography of each place gave me a favorable shock. For decades, this vast land provided a stage for nomadic peoples to perform. Today, we can still feel the simplicity and fierceness of the nomadic descendants. The Kunlun Mountains, Tianshan Mountains, and Altay Mountains are like a grand harp across Central Asia and Western Asia, transmitting the thumping sound of horse hooves to the most distant places. The blood of the knights was indifferent to any desolation. Genghis Khan's cavalry swept from Talmahatai, Ili River and Altay Mountains to the Central Plains, turning the vast Caspian Sea into an inland lake. What a brutal, simple and strong rhythm! Li Bai came from one direction, and the horse Hu Ji on the earth, mountains and glaciers became his spiritual cavalry. He didn't care about the gentleness, honesty, delicacy and etherealness of the Central Plains. He swept across the pen and rushed forward, injecting the toughness and purity of the knights of the Western Regions into the poetry world of the Tang Dynasty, which shocked all the poets. Dongting smoke waves. The wind and clouds on Red Cliff, the cries of Shu Tao apes, and the mighty rivers all flew up at once. ?
The knight-errant Li Bai came rustling here, and his feet and poetry brought the landscape of the Tang Dynasty to life.